Thursday, July 04, 2013

Dig Here Said the Angel - latest album by Daniel Amos

Disclaimer

This is not a
review because I am not a critic. But I am critical, and picky as old grumpy
men often are. Most of these opinions are underscored by personal exigencies of
the moment, be they digestive, post-prandial somnolent, restless legs
disordered or globally acute & non-sensorial in nature. So the most these
notes reach for is to be respectfully amusing, honestly appreciative and more
than a little unapologetically bombastic and presumptuous.

Took some time
to catch the latter and to ask myself, “what do I mean by transcendent?” I don’t mean an escapist, post-modern leap
into upper-story metaphysics. I mean that even when a lyric poses as personal,
it never leaves us out in the chicken coop to fend for ourselves. We can
include ourselves in the experiences of the narrator every time without that
being a force-fit. A transcendent album is rare, wonderful and inviting like a twenty-first
century book of pilgrim’s psalms.

Onward to
the Songs

Now at first I’m
a bit startled. When I am a little sleepy (98-99% of the time) and click on Play,
my brain’s default expectation is Sgt. Pepper’s… can’t explain it, that is just
what happens. With the opening guitar and intimate vocal I suddenly find myself
in Mr. Buechner’s Dream which is quite disorienting. I hate being in someone
else’s dream. So after lifting the needle and checking the label I see the
singer had a mishap with his transmission: Forward in Reverse, a common
senior moment. But by then Mr. Buechner’s Dream has musically boarded the
Magical Mystery Tour to end up lyrically Driving in England… very jarring but
it keeps Getting Better, chocked full of Mr. Taylor’s turn of phrase, leaving
me to wonder is this a different angel who lied or the same one supervising the
excavation?

Jesus Wept contains one of my favorite lines on
the CD, “They mounted up like eagles, now they’re dropping like flies..”. Reminds
me of my dad some years ago, revealing one of the nuances of becoming truly
old, lamenting how he had had outlived all his friends. Instead of a typical
chorus the verses end with the song’s title, a plain reminder of the cost of
Christ’s redemption (His broken humanity) followed by a lyrical pause as the
guys move us through pleasing chord progressions and into the next stanza. There’s
a matter of fact beauty in this song, “for not all tears are an evil” (Gandalf),
and we will yet dance.

The title
track sounds like it reaches into the decades when I lost track of Mr. Amos and
his amalgamated buddies. By this point we progress from “we’s all gonna die someday
‘cuz we’re getting old and stuff” to a resigned “ok, I’m dying”. By now it’s
apparent even the kitchen sink may be employed for seismic sonic effects before
this is over, and what cosmic splashes of magma they be. (A quick agreement
with others who’ve suggested listening with headphones, and I would add: set
volume near 10.)

Then the lonely
hearts club puts on their (Our) New Testament Best and we discover there
is mercy enough for all the old men dancing the waltz on Pablo Fanque’s flying
trapeze. Is mercy the key to Christian unity? Ask the guys on the trapeze.

Enough mercy
for another song: Love, Grace and Mercy. Another one of the more straight
ahead DA rockers we love. After one of the most rapid-fired lyric lines in
history we end up on our knees and begging for more. By the end the bells and
angel chorus take us into the inner sanctuary.

Then we evolve
to… dead. Terry emphasizes Now That I’ve Died in a way that is more than
effect. He means it. This not a nod to punk-headed imitators of ancient rock
monsters. This is an essential statement of essential meaning in a repetitive
essential manner by which essential absolutes are reduced to their essential
purity: “i dead, u dead – let us not kid ourselves, we’s all dead.”. Do you
hear the jingling reference to Like Lazarus followed by the old feller’s
ghoulish guitar lick? And whence that falsetto chorus dancing about like
cherubs? Methinks a reprise of the impish King’s Kids. FYI Lazarus, though sometimes
unnamed, is repeat offender throughout the CD. And, yes Uncle T, we hear the
less than subtle reference to posthumous renown… still looking to the mercy.

Midstream we
might think the Shotgun Angel has journeyed to Abbey Road singing We’ll All Know Soon Enough along the
way. This opens with an unsettling stroll through trolling rolls and icy
tremolos that lead me to think, “I’m not in Kansas anymore.” A childhood buddy
of mine once said he thought when we died, all we would see is a sign that says
“This Is It” and then ‘click’ nothing… an easy adolescent cliché to avoid
thinking of what else might be there. But here DA forces us to consider the
questions we might ask in that microsecond between death and epiphany… with a majestic
gothic guitar theme like a soundtrack to a film by Edgar Alan Poe. Kept looking
over my shoulder and expecting to catch a glimpse of the Hound of Heaven. This
is vying to be a personal favorite.

Waking Up
Under Water – Hans
Zimmer? Is that you and Captain Jack dancing in your tricorns and breeches
across the ocean floor? No! It’s Mr. Chamberlain, who has fallen off the moon
to find himself under the reality of reality. Another straight shooting rocker
me likes, with a bit of thunder from legends who were Born to Be Wild on their
way to Kashmir. This one gets the hook of the year award.

A hero sometimes
declines rescue so he might become a greater servant. The Uses of Adversity
is the plain request of such a plain hero. Classic DA colors intertwine around
this ballad of grounded and timeless wisdom from an elder brother.

Ruthless
Hum of Dread plays out
like a poem accompanied by music. Well sure, what TST song doesn’t? I say this
one does more than many, and the production reflects that when the instruments
drop out entirely for a few lines, a technique found elsewhere on the album.
Terry might just as well have been cloistered in a smoke filled Greenwich
Village café with Ed on bongos... well ok, toms. But sweet release comes in the
last verse: not even dread’s awful grip on our innards in the middle of the
night can stand up to death’s entry into Life. “Ruthless” ends with the lads
having a bit of ambient fun.

On the last
song Terry glides into a Lennon-esque older brother’s assuring voice, a nice
sound for the good Uncle, and the song’s opening feel is not unlike Lennon’s
Imagine, as well as the more prominent piano. Soon comes the triumphant, spiraling
guitar break that parts the clouds and bam! The Sun Shines On Everyone launches
into an anthemic declaration – a great arm in arm chorus fairly exclaimed by
brothers and sisters across the world, and cheered by angels across the sky.

Of the
Players

Mr. Chandler
is the only multi-personality bass player ever encountered. Who else might
start two songs in a row with the same “baWhoom” growl, and don’t we just love
it? Check tracks 5&6 – what’s fun is the baWhoom uses the same notes but leads
to a different key. His understated bass lines dance around the song’s roots
like gnomes in Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” until they erupt in
furtive snarls, then crawl back into their troll caves to ravish the shadows
again.

The other day
I caught the end of a Radiohead song while switching between stations… and
thought, “wow, that sounds like Mr. Flesch doing yet another ghost-apocalyptic,
six-stringed nuclear train wreck…” That
wouldn’t have been my thought if I hadn’t listened to “Dig” a few times
already. Where does all that come from? Perhaps it’s best not to… dig too deep.
Not here, anyway… awesome.

The guitar and
keyboard layers would have made the sixties psychedelic crowd soar… higher? Is
it just me, or aren’t these marvels of twenty-first century engineering
inspired by their analog counterparts from that era, finally liberated from the
squeaks and squeals of the iron age? Keyboards? Enough to fill the Albert Hall.
Mr. Watson and related digital masters excel throughout.

Steady, they
say. So is a fine automobile. Sure you can be blasted by a reckless, throaty,
smoke belching monster, but if you want to be transported through a crystalline
range of alpine peaks and emerge the better for it, you’ll do well to dwell on the
punchy metrics of Mr. McTaggert.

In Summary

Clearly the
album prompts the entreaty, “Uncle Terry, you’re scaring me. All this talk of
death! Please go on tour asap and dispel these lingering images of your
ravished skeletal fingers clutching a shovel like the neck of your favorite ax.”
Ah, but it is clear, dear one, why you’ve taken us along this macabre road: my moldering soul will pass through a grief, a
corpse, a tomb… but it is not a lost, unintended path. Instead it’s the
liberating transfiguration traced across my heart by the tip of Jehovah’s finger.
Thank you for digging through a formidable subject, and “painting the grace
you’ve been given” so we can see it too.

I don’t know
enough about good production quality to recognize it even when it parts
my hair, splits my skull and embeds
itself between my disparate left and right brains. Which is precisely what
happens when you leave this CD spinning for hours on end in your headphones.
Left and right fight each other to catch that last shimmering flash that went
by. Hah! So what do I not know? This thing is smashing good! It seems every
track braids iridescent rays of gold and platinum, rare earths and a
little dirt, into an illuminated manuscript of smoking incense. Mr. Daugherty &
crew leave no stone unturned, no hole undug in their Search for the Lost Chord,
fill, harmony, and aural brilliance.

My ironic eardrums
are turned inside out.

I've been dug
to the core.

You’ve kil’t
me DA.

Philippians
3:8-14

3:10 “that I
may know Him and the power of His resurrection and fellowship of His sufferings,
being conformed to His death…”

What a great review! This was fun to read even if I only caught half of your references. I see from your brilliant word-crafting why you and Terry are old friends! I think the term "grateful dead" comes to mind as I read you review. I also thought that line about eagles and flies was striking. So stark and blunt and crass and true all at once. I was cutting the grass the first time I listened to it and it had me thinking about it the next few laps. Anyway, thanks for the read!Ron Easton from the DA message board

Great review - I got this early download at the office, gave it a listen and as soon as I got home went right into my wife and I too said to her, “Uncle Terry, is scaring me." Whether he is speaking of his own travails or not, the cries of "let me out" in Jesus Wept made my wife cry. The lyric hit home to all of us who realize that the rescue from this earth-suit may never come, sans death and pain. Too me not since Bibleland has the heart of the songs been so "on the sleeve".

God in the Wasteland (The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams) by David Wells

Authentic Christianity by Ray Stedman

Problem of Pain by CS Lewis

Mere Christianity by CS Lewis

How Should We Then Live by Francis Schaeffer

Escape From Reason by Francis Schaeffer

He is There and He is Not Silent by Francis Schaeffer

The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer

New Testament by God

Old Testament by God

Comments on Books

Schaeffer taught me there is no question larger than God: while there are many questions that can challenge my interpretations, there are none that can unhinge my faith.

CS Lewis taught me that real answers to large questions begin with belief in a rational God.

Schaeffer and Lewis are almost exclusively responsible for my inability to accept the premise of relative truth while at the same time not allowing me to get comfortable (lazy) with absolute truth. To explore this with more recent work (1994) see God in the Wasteland by Wells - surprisingly he mentions neither Schaeffer nor Lewis in his bibliography.